


Rogue Awakens

by Hatteress (goddammitstacey)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Baze is too old for this shit, Crossover, Found Family, M/M, That's Not How The Force Works, Time Skips, but who gives a fuck not meeeee
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 19:33:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11584722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddammitstacey/pseuds/Hatteress
Summary: Three decades are a kriff of a thing to lose, but here Baze is, choking on the sands of Jakku and wondering how he slept through an entire epoch.In which the Force can go screw itself, Baze and Rey make a surprisingly good team, and Baze is going to kill Chirrut, just as soon as he tracks him down.





	Rogue Awakens

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fault of [tygermama](http://tygermama.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr [who said](http://goddammitstacey.tumblr.com/post/161223126653/are-there-any-fic-out-there-where-baze-malbus-is), "Are there any fic out there where Baze Malbus is basically the Wolverine of the Star Wars universe and everywhere he goes, he ends up with a new young lady to teach the art of being grumpy and kicking ass too? Cause I think there should be"
> 
> Ask and ye shall receive?

Baze wakes up, which is the first surprise. The second comes at the feel of desert under him, similar but wholly different to the sands of Scarif. For an overwhelming second he thinks he's back on Jedha, but he knows Jedha's land in the very core of him, and this isn't it. This is something very different.

It takes him the whole of the sun’s trek across the sky to learn just how much.

Niima Outpost is small, ragged, and untrusting. But it does have water. Foul, sour water, but water nonetheless. Baze has had worse. It also has information, which Baze finds infinitely harder to stomach.

It takes him a while to understand what the wrinkled stall-holder is telling him—he's somehow skipped not only years but an _epoch_ —but in the end it's clear. Or as clear as it can be. Because while almost three decades seem to have passed, they've also _passed him by_. The face looking back from the burnished metal plate behind the stall-holder is no older than the one that fled Jedha's destruction. His knees certainly don't feel the weight of his lost time.

That first night is spent mostly sleepless, his back to a wall and head spinning with his circumstance. His hands feel too empty in his lap, missing the reassuring weight of his repeater canon like a lost limb. He can't help but curse whatever power— _the Force_ , his head whispers traitorously even as he growls it into silence—transported him here for not bringing his firepower with him. It would have made earning passage off Jakku easier.

Which is what he must do. Because if he's here, the burning sands of Scarif already fading into memory, he must believe that somewhere out in this future galaxy, Chirrut is as well. And if nothing else in this new time is familiar, the need to find his way back to his husband very much is.

* * *

He wakes to find a dusty, waif of a girl trying to pick his pockets. This goes about as well as expected. Even as he grabs her Baze feels a sharp pang of nostalgia for the streets of Jedha where the urchins knew well enough to avoid him, even if the worst they ever faced was a hot meal and Chirrut's calm education on the difference between assassins and tourists. Not that he is much of either right now, out of time as he is.

The girl twists and hisses in his grip like a feral tooka and Baze has to work at making sure he doesn't accidentally snap her toothpick of a wrist as he rises to his feet.

"Stop that," he says mildly, not very surprised when that just gets him a wild growl and renewed thrashing. Baze rolls his eyes and lifts the girl into the air until she tires herself out. It doesn't take long. The rags she's wearing do nothing to hide the lack of meat on her bones.

"Are you finished?" he says after she goes limp, hanging like a particularly angular vine in his grip.

A second, and then finally a nod.

Baze lowers the creature to the ground and is unsurprised when she takes the opportunity to scarper. The kick to the groin however...

Baze groans as he slowly unfolds himself. The girl has disappeared into the growing rush of the early-morning market. Baze would curse her if he weren't so very mildly impressed.

* * *

Niima Outpost reveals itself to be a scavenging settlement, popped up not far from the remains of a galactic battle that must have happened while Baze was... whatever he was in the time between Scarif and now. Commerce is one hundred percent salvaged tech, which presents a problem. Baze knows guns and kyber, neither of which will get him very far on this dust bowl.

His first forays out to the ship graveyard result in three skirmishes as the other scavengers get a feel for him, a fifth of a portion for something unpronounceable Baze managed to yank out of a downed x-wing, and a whole lot of useless scrap metal. It becomes very apparent that while he can hold his own against the more vulture-prone scavengers, he simply doesn't know enough about ships to scrape a living on this Force-forsaken planet, let alone save enough for passage off-world.

It's his fifth day on Jakku, his second without food, when a solution presents itself. Or rather, throws a rock at him.

Baze catches it, but it's a near thing, so the scowl he turns up toward the culprit has extra heat in it. And oh. Of course.

"Do you make a habit of antagonising people five times larger than yourself?" he asks.

The urchin girl shrugs from her flimsy market-stall roof perch. "It's a living."

Baze grunts, and shuffles on, dropping the rock as he goes. If he hurries he can claim the hollowed out tie fighter to the north of the settlement for the night. He feels rather than hears the girl drop to the ground behind him.

"You looking for a repeat of last time, girl?"

"No," the girl says, a careful distance behind him. It's smart. She's smart. "I have a proposition for you actually."

Baze keeps walking, the stalls closing up around him with an efficiency he still finds jarring after years watching the Jedhan markets idle around him at the end of a long day. "I have no portions, child." _Nothing to proposition me for_ , goes unsaid.

"I know," the girl says. "That's kind of the point actually."

He finally stops, turning to face the urchin as she skids to her own light halt five paces back. She's underestimated his speed, but not by much.

The girl squares her shoulders, like she's going into battle. "I've been watching you," she says. "You're a shite scavenger."

Baze can't help it: he barks a laugh that has the girl startling before the corners of her mouth turn up slightly. Chirrut always said Baze's laugh softened him, and that in turn softened the people around him. Baze hasn't had much cause to laugh lately.

"Your point, girl?"

The girl takes a breath. "I'm _not_ a shite scavenger."

Baze raises a brow. "Yes, I can see you're positively drowning in portions."

The girl huffs, crossing her bony arms. "I'm a good scavenger, I'm... not a good fighter," she says, like the admission is being dragged out of her.

Ah. Baze thinks back to the short clashes with other scavengers out in the graveyard. His knuckles still smart from where they'd caught a Teedo's helmet in the last one. He looks again at the girl; she can't be older than fifteen years, quick but slight and weary with malnutrition. He can see the course her scavenging runs would have taken.

"You wish to form an alliance," Baze says. It's... not a bad idea actually.

"Your strength and my knowledge," the girl says. "We split the take fifty-fifty."

She looks like she's waiting for him to argue. He could too, knows just looking at her that he's her last, if not only option. But then she's his as well, if he wants to avoid offering his services to Unkar Plutt. He'd rather not add that spot to his already tarnished track record.

"Deal," he says, and the girl smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> [Come nerd with me about star wars](http://goddammitstacey.tumblr.com)


End file.
